


Infinitas Infinitio Infinitus

by Lirazel



Series: Variations on Eternity [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-15
Updated: 2009-04-15
Packaged: 2017-10-05 00:32:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirazel/pseuds/Lirazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>  <em>Learning to live is a lot harder than learning to die.  And just when Buffy masters one, she learns she's a novice at the other.</em></p><p>post-NFA future fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to [Basiare](http://archiveofourown.org/works/94756).

_“For them that think death's honesty won't fall upon them naturally life sometimes must get lonely.”_ –Bob Dylan

\--

Her fortieth birthday, and they can’t ignore it anymore.  Till now, they could get by with not questioning, not verbalizing, even if it gets harder each time they meet up with the Scoobies.  Dawn has looked liked the older sister for ten years now, and the silver hairs that Xander started complaining about that last year in Sunnydale have launched a preemptive attack against the dark ones, won, and now maintain the majority.  And if magic has smoothed Willow’s face—Spike makes wry comments about her being well-preserved, and she smacks him—her voice has dropped an octave and there’s a wisdom that only comes with maturity in her eyes.  And then there’s Giles, who’s getting old.  Not so old, really, in years, not these days, but his hair is all silver and the ravages of cancer that may have been defeated have still taken a toll on his body, and Spike watches as Buffy mentally reminds herself not to hug him as tightly as she wants to.

The contrast is undeniable, but unspoken.  There is no question that everyone’s aware, but no one is willing to speak of it.  They’ll have to face it sooner or later, but they put it off again and again, and somehow the topic never comes up.

But there's something about the age of forty.  Not that most people really think of that as old anymore, at least not once they get past twenty-five.  In his human days, forty was on the way out and you were lucky if you reached it, but now most people don't even slow down.  Still, there's a lot of tradition that comes with that birthday, over-the-hill and such, culture still making a big deal out of it, and it's fitting, maybe, that that's the day they have to face the truth.

So he wakes up on the morning of her fortieth birthday and finds himself in bed alone.  Drowsily, he flops his hand over to her side and finds that the sheets are still warm.  If he weren’t still half-asleep, he’d smile, but as it is he just flips over onto his back to call out and beckon her back to bed.  “Want me to give you part of your present now, love?  Spankings are traditional, so I hear tell,” he says, voice gravelly with sleep.

She doesn’t answer, so he drags his eyes open.  Two seconds later, so awake that it feels like he’s just clawed his way out of his coffin and is exploring his new senses all over again, he jolts upright, his stomach clenching.

She’s curled up on the bench in front of her vanity, still naked, hair tumbling loose over her shoulders, staring at the mirror with a kind of absorption he’s never seen her display outside of a fight or sex.  It doesn’t take more than a moment for him to realize that she didn’t even hear him speak, that he might as well not even be in the room.  Her hand steals up, her fingers brushing across the pale face reflected in the mirror.

Some years ago, he’d held Joy, Dawn’s eldest, in front of the mirror and watched as the chubby baby discovered her reflection for the first time.  Xander had made jokes that Spike would break Joy’s mind with the fact of the vampire’s non-reflection.  But Joy had been so enchanted with herself that she barely paid attention to the mirror telling her she was floating in mid-air, and Spike never tired of watching Joy watch herself.

Buffy is reminding him of her niece now—that total, single-minded immersion in her own reflection.  Except this is different, terrifying: all of the wonder has been sucked away, leaving only a kind of horrified fascination behind, like Dawn’s little boy Stephen picking at a scab.

Spike rises slowly, fighting back a kind of nausea he shouldn’t be capable of—vampires don’t _get_ sick—and pads toward her, watching as she runs her hands over her body, staring at it as if it doesn’t belong to her.  He knows every square inch of that body and makes damn sure she’s aware of every inch of it, too, paying attention to every delicious bit.  And now she’s looking at it like she’s never seen it before, and yeah, he’s terrified.

He sits down behind her on the cushioned bench, hip bumping her rear, feeling her warmth flow into him at that point and then radiate through his entire being.  “Surprised by how gorgeous you are, pet?  Guess if I could see my reflection, I wouldn’t ever stop being surprised to see such a handsome mug starin’ back either.”

He’s too scared to really know what to say, but as soon as those words are out of his mouth, he winces: he doesn’t know what the right thing to say is, but he knows that wasn’t it.

But she doesn’t even acknowledge his presence; her fingers are at the corners of her eyes where Xander’s have started to show crow’s-feet, where hers are smooth as ever.

“Buffy?  Slayer?”  He drags his own fingertips up the length of her arm, and goosebumps rise like Braille only he can read in their wake, but she doesn’t even notice.  His stomach tightens.

“Could look at you all day, too.  For a thousand years and never get tired of the sight.”  He drops a kiss where her neck meets her shoulder, one of his--and her--favorite spots, but she still doesn’t acknowledge him.

Then, after a moment:  “A thousand years,” she murmurs.  “A thousand years of looking just like this.”

His dead heart is aching now, throbbing with fear, but he tries to keep it light.  They’ve each had their crises before, and it’s always up to the other to keep it under control for the sake of the one breaking down.  “‘S not so bad, love.  Could be nothin’ there but empty space.”

Again, she speaks and again he feels like she hasn’t even heard him.  “I look like I’m twenty.”

“Just imagine if you could bottle that, love,” he says, pressing another kiss to her neck and raising his hands to cup her breasts.  They’ve had lots of fun times with mirrors; maybe if he can get her motor revvin’, that will thaw her out of this frozen fascination.  “Make a billion dollars, ‘specially in L.A.”

She strikes his hands away, stumbles to her feet, and grabs her panties and the dress she’d laid out the night before, jerking them on with movements devoid of her natural grace.  “I look twenty, _Spike_,” she spits angrily, and he suddenly wishes for the carved-of-ice routine. 

But no—no—they’ve lived through thousands of fights, what's one more?  Besides, anything’s better than that catatonia that’s crept up on her before: when Glory took Dawn, far too moments during the horrible year after she clawed her way out of her grave, the night the Scoobies kicked her out.  Those were her darkest moments, the ones he was never sure he could drag her back from, and if she’s still able to shoot fire at him, though he may walk away with burns, at least he can be sure they both _will_ be walking away.

“I still get _carded_.  I get dirty looks when I meet up with Xander, like I’m some gold-digger tramp who’s with him for his money.  In five years people are going to start asking if Dawn is my _mother_.”

He holds up his hands, placating.  “All right, love, but it—“

“I’m forty years old!  And I have lived every single ones of those years, and I deserve to be able to wear them, too!”

Well, that’s not anything he ever expected a woman to say.  But then, as far as he knows there’s only ever been two kinds of women: the ones who would grow old and age, and the ones who were technically dead and for whom their eternal youth made possible their hedonism.  He could no sooner imagine Dru or Darla complaining about their unchanging nature than he could see them lamenting their victims.  Human women long for never-ending youth, but of course none of them ever attained it, none of them ever had to face the brutal reality of it.  But then, there’s never been anyone like Buffy.

“I can’t—I can’t _look _at any of them anymore!  They’re slipping away, and I’m stuck here, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it, and one day they’re going to leave me alone, and I can’t handle that!”

He takes a step back, stung, though he knows he shouldn’t be.  “You’re never going to be alone,” he says quietly but intensely.  “You know I’d never leave you.”

“Yeah?”  She shoves her feet into the shoes she’d bought just three days ago especially for her birthday party.  They’d gone to Harrod’s and she’d tried on dozens of frocks and shoes, strutting like a runway model for his approval, giggling and flirting and making him carry her shopping bags.  He’d watched her glow and felt his heart swell with love so that it almost felt like it was beating.

Now she doesn’t even take the time to admire the pumps, just throws her coat on and grabs her purse.

“Well, that’s not enough,” she finishes, starting towards the door.

A crack rips through the room and it takes him a few moments to figure out that he’d been holding on to the bedpost so tightly that it snapped off in his hand.  Buffy freezes at the door, shoots a look over her shoulder, one that’s half-apologetic, but it doesn’t touch him.  Because now he’s the frozen one.

She may have said _That’s not enough_, but what he heard was _You’re not enough_.  And she knows it.

He stares at the carved wood in his hand, idly acknowledging that the ragged end would make one hell of a stake, then up at her standing framed in the doorway.

She walks out the door.

A few moments later, he hears the front door slam behind her.

\--

He waits.  Waits too long, really.  With traffic at this time of night, it’ll take a good while to get from the Kensington mews to Giles’s inherited Mayfair mansion.  He should have left twenty minutes to make sure he gets there on time, but he just can’t make himself open the door.

He doesn’t want to walk through it alone.

She’ll probably be there.  This party has been planned for weeks, and everyone who’s anyone in Buffy’s life has made it a point to come to London to celebrate.  She’s mature now, a woman, confident, contained, but there’s still a bit of the girl left in her, the girl who was so eager to please her friends all the time.  She won’t let them down.

He hopes.

But still he waits.

It’s not like it’s the first time she’s walked out.  Hell, they’ve both stormed out of their home so many times that the door hinges have to be replaced on a regular basis—their landlord makes jokes that carry just a hint of nervousness—most times just to find something to kill before coming back and shagging furiously for hours.  Other times, though, one or the other of them will be gone for days or even weeks.  Once, Spike himself took off for three full months before coming back and falling into her arms.  They’re both passionate, high-tempered people, and there are times they just can’t be around each other.  They’ve long ago agreed that it’s better to leave than to hit.

But those times were different.   Because no matter how angry either of them were, the one walking out always took a moment to pause before flinging the door open to say, “I love you,” or “I’ll be back.”  Sometimes the tone of those words was so acidic that it stung to hear them, but it was better than nothing.  Because what they were really saying was, “I need this time.  But I will always come back because I love you.”  Between her abandonment issues and the low self-esteem that never lets him (_even now_) quite believe that she’s really his, chosen _him_, those words are completely necessary.  They _have_ to say them, and they always have.

But she didn’t say anything this time.

He’d left the bathroom door open when he took a shower; he would have heard her come in even with it closed—vampire hearing is like that—but he needed the reassurance.  Didn’t turn on the radio while he dressed or the TV while he drank his blood.  Paced furiously around the small space that most of the time seems just-cozy-right for the two of them but at this moment seemed like a cage.

And still she hasn’t come.

Finally, he throws on his duster over his dress clothes and plunges out the door before he can stop himself.  He just hopes he can figure out something to say to everyone if she doesn’t show up.

No.  She’ll be there.  She _will_.

-


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   _Learning to live is a lot harder than learning to die.  And just when Buffy masters one, she learns she's a novice at the other._

She doesn’t let out the sigh of relief when he finally arrives—late, no surprise—though she wants to.  She jerks her eyes away guiltily when his find her—his first thought on entering any room is always to find out where she is, and then, no matter how large the room, how many people there are, he remains perfectly aware of where she is at all times; the knowledge of that makes her giddy at times—noting that he looks wilder than he has in years, more untamed.  More like a vampire.  Except that she’s never seen another vampire look wild with worry.

She knows it’s her fault, but she can’t bring herself to go over to him, to apologize, even to slip her hand into his or press a kiss to his cheek.  She can’t, though she knows she should, knows she must, knows she _will_.   But not now.  Not yet.

She’d made up some silly excuse about why he wasn’t with her when she’d arrived.  Xander and Dawn and their respective spouses had been too busy with their kids to really notice, Willow was busy introducing her new girlfriend to everyone, and Giles, so busy with running the Council, rarely picked up on these things anymore.  But Angel gazed at her worriedly, and she felt the childish urge, for the first time in _years_, to stick out her tongue at him.   His perceptiveness and concern had made her swoon as a schoolgirl, but more than twenty years later, they have have the tendency of driving her crazy.

She’d ignored him, plastering on a big grin and giving hugs to her nieces and nephews, listening as Joy told her about her latest gymnastics competition, Stephen rambled on and on about his favorite video game, and Xander and Dalili’s twins, Adila and Anisa, related to her in their adorable accents the story of the latest demon their mom had killed.  She’d teased Angel and Hannah’s solemn-eyed son Sean into giggles with a story about his dad and “Uncle Spike’s” adventures.  Sometimes she aches with the knowledge that she won’t have children, but she has Spike, and she has these kids, and she wouldn’t trade anything for that.

She’d thrown her arms around Xander, making a joke about how he must be used to Slayer-strength hugs while his wife, Dalili, a Slayer he’d met fifteen years before in Kenya where they still lived, laughed her agreement.  She’d seen Dawn just the day before, but that didn’t keep them from hugs and speaking in their lightning-fast sister-slang that no one else even tried to understand.  She’d been thrilled to meet Willow’s girlfriend Ilse and to swap a few compliments with Angel’s wife Hannah.  When Giles comes down the stairs, she’d made sure to hug him quickly when she really just wanted to hang on (_he still smelled like he always had, of peppermint and tweed and something Giles-y_), but she knew that if she did, she would give herself away.

But then she couldn’t avoid Angel anymore; he’d practically backed her up into a corner to get her talk to him, and it’s just her luck that Spike arrives just at that moment.  He notices how quickly she looks away from Spike as the kids rush at him, a mass of curls and sticky hands and bruised knees, squealing “Uncle Spike!” in a pitch approaching levels only dogs—and vampires—can hear.  Angel notices, of course, because usually nothing makes her bubble with joy the way watching Spike with five kids hanging from his neck and various limbs does.  And right now she can’t even look at him.

She braces herself.

“Buffy,” Angel says, drawing out her name.

Here it comes.

“What’s wrong?”

There it is.

“I’m missing Faith,” she says, and it’s not a lie, not at all, even if it’s not what he’s asking.  She feels her mouth twist wryly, one of those expressions she’s picked up from Spike over the years, just as he now sighs in exasperation just like she does. 

She supposes it’s fitting, all the ways her life has done an about-face.  Her best enemy becomes her best ally becomes her best friend becomes her only love.  Why shouldn’t her greatest rival have turned into one of the few people who’ve ever understood her, a sister just as much as Dawn ever was?

Angel’s eyes have gone soft and sad, the way they always do when he’s thinking about Faith or Cordelia or Wesley or Fred or any of the others he’s lost—and there’ve been so many.

“I miss her, too.”  She noticed recently that in times of high emotion, he barely moves his mouth when he speaks, as if he thinks that if he opens it too wide, all his sorrow will come pouring out.  She knows how he feels.

“There was so much pain with us, you know?  So much resentment, and I always blamed her for taking everything that was mine and she always blamed me for having everything she wanted.  But she understood.  In a way no one else could, because she knew what it was like to stand alone.”  _To fall alone_.  “None of the new girls get that.  But Faith did.  We couldn’t keep being bitter with each other after that.”

“You two were meant to be close,” Angel agrees.  “You just let everything get in the way.”

“Yeah.  And we finally were.  Close.  And now it’s been six years….”

Faith’s death—line of duty, apocalypse-averting, with her boots on—had nearly shattered her in ways no other hand.  Maybe it was just the final straw after so many years of loss.  _MerrickJennyKendraAngelMomTaraAnyaSpike.  _So many.

Or maybe she’d been subconsciously counting on Faith to be here beside her while she faces this new terror, and she doesn’t know how to do it alone.

“Hey.”  Angel’s hand is at her elbow now, warm and comforting, and he guides her to a chair in the alcove between the dining room and the kitchen.  He disappears for a moment, leaving her alone with her shivers—_When did I start shivering?_—and when he returns, he’s holding a glass of wine.  He puts it in her hand, and she lets her fingers close around the cool stem, stares into the burgundy depths.  It looks like blood.  But then, when you’re a Slayer, everything looks like blood because blood is always the point.  _Blood is life.  It's what keeps you going. Makes you warm. Makes you hard. Makes you other than dead._

__

It’s warm, sliding down her throat, and she wonders if this is what vampires feel when they drink blood: warm and heady and—_What’s that word?_—robust, lingering on the tongue, pooling in the belly.

“It would be easier if she were here.  We’d figure it out together.”

“Figure what out?”  Angel’s voice is very, very gentle, a gentleness that she usually resents because it hurls her back to high school.  Right now, though, she’s thankful: she’d shatter if his touch weren’t so light.

She puts the wine glass down on the table beside her so firmly that it cracks, but not all the way through.  Not enough for the bloodwine (_Maybe those Christians are on to something_) to escape.  Angel winces.

“How did you _do_ it?” she asks suddenly.

He looks startled now.  “Do what?”

“Just keep _going_.  For centuries.  Watching everything change.  Watching everyone go away.”

She looks down at her hands in her lap.  Hands that are just the same as they were in Sunnydale, only with a few new scars and a shade of nail polish she never expected to choose, a ring she never really thought she’d be able to wear on one finger.

He’s silent for a long moment, and yeah, it’s like high school again.  She remembers so clearly his profound stillness, much more clearly than she remembers his kisses or his words.  That was the single thing that always made him seem slightly alien to her, that let her really believe he was a vampire.  He could be so quiet.  So still.

Spike is, as in most things, the opposite of his grandsire.  All nervous energy, too many words, jiggling his foot, bouncing on the balls of his feet, fiddling with his Zippo, snarking and mocking and flirting and just always so…hyper-alive.  Only when he sleeps beside her does he seem like a corpse, but even then, he absorbs her warmth, falling into the patterns of her breathing.  The line between them blurs when they sleep.

“Why aren’t you asking Spike about this?”

Her eyes burn, and when she speaks her voice cracks.  “I…can’t.”

_It would hurt him.  I’ve done enough for that for one lifetime.  Oh, God….Except that I did it this morning.  I did it this morning when I walked out and I didn’t say anything.  How could I have _done _that to him?  I know what it’s like to get walked out on.  How could I?_

More silence in the alcove, but she hears Dawn’s laugh and the kids’ squeals in the other rooms.  They sound very far away.

“Buffy, it was different for me,” he finally says, and she can practically hear him trying out words in his mind and rejecting them like puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit.  “At the beginning I had Darla and the hunt, and then Dru and Spike.  I didn’t need anything else.  It wouldn’t have occurred to me to even _want _anything else.” 

_He’s come so far_.  Finally using first person, active voice, for those times, like being human again has finally let him admit that Angel and Angelus were never as far apart as he’d told himself they were. 

“Then came the soul, and I thought I deserved every moment of agony.  It was my due.  But I had no one.  No one to watch slip away.”

“Until me,” she says dully.

“Until you,” he agrees.  “And for a little while, I could pretend.  Pretend to be a normal guy with a job and a brave, pretty girl.  And I ran away when I figured out that I couldn’t keep pretending.  And then there was the promise of the Shanshu.”

_Run away?_  He never would have phrased it like that back in the hold days.  Come so far indeed.

“I had people then—Cordy and Wes and the others—but there was also this promise.  One day I’d be like them.  I could grow old with them.  I wouldn’t have to watch them—“   He stopped.  Started again.  “That was the promise.”

She’s never given much thought to why the Shanshu was so important to him.  She couldn’t imagine Spike ever wanting to be human; he enjoyed being a vampire so much.  But this…this she could understand.

And all of a sudden the irony of it rushes into her, bitter and biting.  He got his Shanshu, only to find out that he had no one to share it with.  Every person he’d imagined spending his human life with was lost to him.  Even she chose Spike.

Of course, he’d moved on.  Found Hannah, who is wonderful and sweet (_and tiny and blonde_) and has a wicked sense of humor and prods him out of his fits of brooding—the ones that most definitely haven’t disappeared with his sun allergy—and he has his sons, and she thinks that he’s happy now.  Only he can never be fully happy.  Not when he has to live with that irony every day.

Angel raises his head suddenly, jerking her away from her thoughts.  “You’re immortal, aren’t you?”

If she hadn’t been sitting, she would have collapsed under the power of hearing those words verbalized for the first time.  She grips the armrest so hard she hears the wood creak, and her mouth feels coated with slimy bitterness.

“Yeah.  It makes sense, I guess.”  She speaks automatically, as though her mouth is speaking on its own, quite separate from her paralyzed mind.  “That the one called to slay the vampires would be immortal like them.  Balance, you know.”  Her tone is flat.  “And no one ever knew because Slayer just don’t live long enough for anyone to be able to tell.”  Then, a whisper:  “They still don’t.”

The spell that they’d thought would give the Slayers a normal life with bonus superpowers only bought the new Slayers five or ten years added onto their life expectancy.  Buffy—and Faith till she died—is still the longest-living of the Slayers.

“You’re sure it isn’t—just you?  Something involving the resurrection spell?”

She shakes her head.  “It’s possible, I guess.  But I think…I think Faith felt it, too.”

He nods, solemn.

“I wasn’t—this was the very last thing I expected.  My second day as a Slayer, Merrick told me I wouldn’t live more than a few years.  And every single day I had to live with that pressing down on me—sometimes I thought I was going to suffocate.  And I did die—twice—just like a good Slayer’s supposed to, and the second time, I wasn’t even scared.  I just wanted to rest.”

Tears are burning back behind her eyes now, and she has to fight to keep from choking.  “I’ve gotten so _good _at dying.  I’ve spend my whole life learning how to do it.  And now that I’ve finally accepted it and gotten the hang of it, I’m supposed to learn to do the opposite?  It’s too late for me to learn how to live.  How am I supposed to change every single way I’ve ever thought about my life?  About who I am?  When I was sixteen, I thought nothing could be scarier than knowing you’re going to die young.  Only knowing I’m going to live forever and watch every single person I care about grow old and die, over and over…that’s so much scarier.  It gets harder every day to look at Giles.  What am I going to do when Dawn looks like my grandmother and my niece and nephew get old enough to be my parents?  And how can I possibly get close to anyone else knowing that the same thing is going to happen every time?”

She buries her face in her hands, white-hot tears slipping between her fingers.  Her shoulders shake, her hands tremble, and she has to bite back the sound of her own weeping.

“Not every time.”

She lifts her tear-stained face, still shaking with sobs.

“Buffy, you know Spike will never leave you.”

_I do.  And why can’t he see that knowing that makes it hurt even more?_

Of course Spike will never leave her.  It’s taken her almost twenty years to reach the point where she can really believe that; it’s not easy to combat thought patterns engrained by twenty years of every man she’s cared about abandoning her.  But she’s finally really gotten there—really _knows _he’ll always be there…and it’s not enough.

God, she _knew_ how that sounded when she said it to him earlier today, and the last thing she’d wanted to do was hurt him so badly.  That’s the very reason she can’t talk to him about this.  She loves him with everything she is, but he isn’t enough.

_He wants to be enough, reason enough for me to be happy that I’m going to live forever.  I love him with everything I am, but he isn’t._

At sixteen, innocent and in the best—_worst?_—kind of epic love, Angel would have been enough.  No.  That’s not true.  Not true at all.  But she would have _thought_ he was.  If she’d been told she was going to live forever, but she’d have Angel all that time…she would have thought it was enough.

But she’s older now.  Wiser, by a whole hell of a lot.  By lightyears.   (_Yeah, you proved that when you walked out this morning. _ She shoves that thought away.)  And she knows that just one person can never, ever be enough.  Not after she’s known so much love from so many people.  Not now.

“But Dawn will.  And Giles and Willow and Xander.   And you and Hannah and Connor and Dalili and the kids.  And anyone else I meet.  Ever.”

“Yeah.”

She leaps to her feet, trembling now not with sorrow but with rage.  “I _hate_ the Powers for this!  What kind of sick bastards would _do _this to a person?  And how could this possibly be good management, anyways?  They can’t expect someone to just keep going and going and never rest and think that that person will still be able to fight, much less still want to!  We _deserve _to rest!”

“Yes.  You do.”

“And what about the other Slayers?  If they start living longer, they’re going to have to deal with this, too!  We’ve got to find some way to turn this off!”

“Buffy, do you really think that will work?”  His voice is so quiet, so calm, that she kind of wants to pummel him, and she’s reminded, once again, why she chose Spike.  Spike would know, would understand that she needs to get rid of these emotions somehow.  He’d tease her into bed or into sparring or take her out and let her slay something.  He’d see what a big deal this is and wouldn’t try to be all calm and mentor-y like Angel. 

_Yeah, you chose him.  But you didn’t choose him today._

Again, she shoves the thought aside.  “I don’t care!  If I have go back to that desert-y place and fight those men and their big shadow rape-y demon, I’ll do it.  They did this to us!  They doomed me to this!  I.  Won’t. Be. A. Pawn.  I refuse.”  About-face of emotion, trembling chin, but determined, a solution:  “I need to talk to Giles and Willow.  We’ll hit the books, make with the research, find something out.”

He catches her arm as she spins to go.  “Buffy, think.  Is this party really the time and place for that?  The kids are all here.  Everyone’s here to celebrate.  Can’t this wait a few days?”

“Of course it can,” she shoots back bitterly.  “It’s not like I’m getting any older.”  Then she wrenches her arm from his grip.  She knows she’s being too hard on him; he’s trying to help, and he’s such a good friend, and it isn’t his fault he isn’t Spike.

“Where are you going then?” he calls after her as she storms down the hall.

“To kill something.”


	3. Infinitas Infinitio Infinitus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   _Learning to live is a lot harder than learning to die.  And just when Buffy masters one, she learns she's a novice at the other._

He glances toward the dining room for the twenty-seventh time in the last eighteen minutes.  Christ, he _hates_ that insidious jealousy that still claws at his insides.  He _knows _Buffy doesn’t want Angel anymore: she chose _him_, even after the Foreheaded One became human and could finally offer her a normal life.  He knows neither one of them feel that way about each other anymore, and even if they did, they would never act on it.

He knows that, but he is who he is.  Insecurities hidden as deep as he can, but always there.  Always ready to ambush him and wrestle him into a stranglehold.

God, he wants to burst in there and steal his wife away.

A hand falls onto his shoulder, and he jumps.

“Relax.  I just passed to ‘get some more ice.’”  Dawn slides up beside him and shakes her glass.  The sound of the ice sloshing back and forth in the scotch seems as loud as the crash of ocean waves.  “They’re just talking.”

He looks away, scowls, growls, “I know that.”

“Yeah, you know it.  But your stupid inferiority complex doesn’t know it.”  She shoves the glass into his hand, and the ring on his finger clinks against the glass.  “Drink up, moron brother-in-law of mine.”

Obedient as always—Dawn’s the only one he’s ever obeyed without question—he downs the scotch in one gulp and hands the glass back to her.

“So, what did you do?”

“_What_?”

“Buffy’s crying.  She only ever cries over you now.  Or when someone dies.”

He feels a jerk on his coat sleeve, and it isn’t till he looks down and sees that Dawn has grabbed hold of it that he realizes he’d started off toward Buffy.

“Whoa.  Slow down, lover boy.  If she wants you to comfort her, she’ll let you know.”

His hands clench into fists.  “I can’t—“

She sets the glass down on a nearby table, and her fingers start prying his fists apart.  “Yeah.  You can.  Sit.”

She not-too-gently pushes him down onto the nearby couch—one that’s certainly as old as he is; he remembers that kind of discomfort that only the Victorians were capable of from his human days—and plops down beside him, dropping her heels on the floor and curling her legs beneath her.  “I was kidding about it being about you.  I wouldn’t have if I’d known you would take it so seriously.  So she’s finally facing the fact that she’s not aging, isn’t she?”

His head whips around, and he gapes at her.  “How the bloody hell did you—“

She laughs, and the sound reminds him of Joyce.  “Spike, when will you figure out that I’m smarter than you?  And that the two of you can’t hide anything from me?”

It’s true.  She always notices, and he should really have stopped being surprised by now.

He looks down at his hand and spins the ring on his left ring finger.  “I don’t know what to say to her, how to help.  But she won’t even let me try!  Goes runnin’ off first thing this morning, won’t even talk to me here, holes up all cozy-like with bloody _Angel_.”  Then, so low he doesn’t expect her to hear: “Says I’m not enough.”

But she’s Dawn.  So of course she hears.  “Oh, Spike.  Of course you’re not.”

He doesn’t even try to hide his wince of pain from her.  What would be the point?  She sees right through him.

“Spike.”  She scoots closer, pulling his arm around her, lays her head on his shoulder.  So proprietary, even now, just like she was as a girl.  “She’s not like you.  You love us, and you’re going to be torn up when you lose us—especially me—but as long as you have Buffy, you’ll be able to be happy.  But she’s not like that.  You’ve said it yourself, over and over: her friends and family make her different.  She’s _human_, Spike.  You’re never going to be the whole of her world, and you shouldn’t be.  It isn’t healthy to wrap up everything you are in one single person—even if you know that person is never going to leave.  And if she _did_ do that, not care about anyone else, make everything only about you, she wouldn’t be Buffy anymore.”  She slips her hand into his.

“I know,” he whispers.  “I know that.”

“And of course there are gonna be moments she won’t be able to look at you.  Other than looking at herself in the mirror, you’ve gotta be the one thing that most reminds her of the way time in her life doesn’t flow the way it’s supposed to.  I mean—when you’re standing next to Giles?  He’s like a fourth of your age, and you look so _young_ and he’s getting old and will only get older.  Of course that’s going to hurt her to see.”

“I don’t ever want to hurt her.”

“She _knows_ that.  But that doesn’t mean that you don’t.”

“I never thought anyone’d ever look at eternal life as anything but a gift.”

Dawn cranes her neck to look at him.  “Are you really surprised?  This is Buffy.  Jumping off the tower, clawing her way out of her grave, deep depression about being alive…any of this ringing a bell?  Besides, it’s not like she’s really going to live forever.”

Something in his stomach jumps. 

“I mean, even with all the other Slayers dealing with the apocalypses—and can I just say, ‘It’s about time’?  It’s ridiculous the amount of those Buffy’s had to face; it’s about time someone else takes on the big stuff—even with how good she is—“

“None better.  Not ever,” he cuts in.

“Even with you watching her back and all of us with our mojo and our books, sooner or later, something’ll get her.”

_But you can kill a hundred. A thousand. A thousand thousand and the armies of Hell besides. And all we need... is for one of us, just one, sooner or later, to have the thing we’re all hoping for._

__

_And that would be what?_

__

_One.  Good.  Day._

__

He doesn’t realize he’s growling low in his throat till she tugs on his hair.  “Hey.  Game face away now.  You don’t want to scare the kiddies.”

He forces himself to fall into the old familiar rhythms of teasing.  “Those hooligans?  They’re more fearless than any of the rest of us.  Probably scare off anything wicked that this way comes with all their noise.”  But he shakes his head, slipping back into human face again.

“But you know I’m right.”

He doesn’t even pretend to misunderstand her.  “Yeah.  I know she won’t…not forever.  But she could last a good long time.”  _She _will _last a good long time._

“And a good long time is going to be a lot longer than is natural for anyone else.  A lot longer than she _wants_ to keep going.  You know that.”

He buries his face in her hair.  She’s changed shampoos dozens of times since he’s known her, but he can still discern her scent underneath, the one that sends him back to those days when Buffy was dead and Dawn was his only comfort in the world.

“What do I do?”  He barely murmurs the words, but again, she hears.  He was counting on that.

“You just stay.  Let her leave if she has to, spend time with other people.  Because you know she’s always coming back to you.  Just listen when she talks and hold her when she cries.”

“I do that already.”  He hates when he sounds this petulant, but he can’t help it.

“Right.  You do.  You’re the most impatient person I’ve ever met, and yet, somehow, you’re the only one I can imagine putting up with all of Buffy’s baggage.”

“She puts up with my baggage, too,” he points out, always eager to defend his love.

“Which is why you’re perfect for each other.  I’m sure she does the same sorts of things for you when your soul pinches, right?”

It’s true.  All the tenderness he’d wanted from her during the Sunnydale days, the kind she’d convinced herself she wasn’t capable of giving…she’s rich with it now, offering it freely, there to whisper soft words while he weeps at night when the nightmares just. Won’t. Stop.

_This is what we do_, she whispers.

And it is.

“She hurt me today.”  Again, he says the words so quietly that it’s almost like he hasn’t said them at all.  Because he feels a pang of guilt for talking about these things with anyone who isn’t them, even if it is Dawn. 

“I know.  I could tell when you walked in.”

“She hasn’t…she hasn’t done anything like that in a really long time.  I didn’t expect it.”

“And that made it hurt all the worse.”

“Yeah.”

She tugs his head down to her shoulder, and he’s reminded again of the longest summer of his life—or un—when he only let himself weep when Dawn was there.

“At first, no one thought you two would make it.”  Her tone is different now, like she’s telling a story to her children, like she should have started off with _Once upon a time_.  “You’d both hurt each other so much, and, as far as the rest of us could see, you seemed to bring out the worst in each other.”  He starts to protest, but she tugs on his hair to keep him quiet.  “We thought that because you were so private; we never saw what went on with you the last year in Sunnydale.  We never knew that you started growing up.”

He snorts at that, at the idea of this little girl—he still so often thinks of her that way, though she appears to be more of a woman now than Buffy—watching them “grow up.”  But he knows she’s right.

“You’ve come so far.  It’s like you’ve matured right in front of our eyes.  When you told me you’d decided you wouldn’t ever hit each other except when you were sparring, even though you both could take it and hitting isn’t for you like it is with other people, I knew you could really get there.  And you have.

“But, Spike, she’s still Buffy.  She may be all grown-up Buffy now, but her first instinct is still to run, to leave before she gets left.  And she isn’t one for really talking about her emotions.  That isn’t right, and it’s not okay, but it is her.”

“I thought she was really gone.”

“She was wrong, Spike.  But the way she looked at you when you came in tonight…I think she knows that.”

They lapse into silence again, and he strains his ears, fancying he’ll be able to hear whatever it is Buffy and Brooding are talking about.

Connor appears in the door, looks first to his wife, and gives her that strange little half-smile that reminds Spike so much of Angel, despite the fact that the young man doesn’t look anything like his dad.  Then he turns his attention to Spike.  “Um, Buffy’s gone out.”

Spike is on his feet within seconds.  “Where?” he barks.

“Dad said she said something about killing something.”


	4. Infinitas Infinitio Infinitus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   _Learning to live is a lot harder than learning to die.  And just when Buffy masters one, she learns she's a novice at the other._

He follows her scent, catches up with her in Hyde Park.  She’s already found some action, tangling behind a clump of trees with a vamp.  He catches a whiff of blood—the vamp’s gotten a taste of someone, though he can tell it wasn’t Buffy.  No, there’s no hint of her blood mixing with the musk of her sweat; he loves the scent when she’s been exerting herself, her essence drowning out the odors of shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, body wash—all those girly things women never used in his day.  When she fights, just as during sex, she’s pure Buffy.

The moon is full above the bare arms of the trees, and he pauses a moment to watch her.  Her hair flashes silver in the half-light, the wine color of her dress now dark as shadows, and he can see the tiny clouds of her breath condensing in the January air.  She’s forgotten her coat, and he has no idea how she’s fighting in those heels (_though after twenty some odd years, you’d think he’d’ve figured it out_), but the cold and the supposed lack of balance haven’t slowed her down.

Not, at least, until the vamp calls and five others coalesce out of the shadows.  He sees her waver for a moment, and then he’s at her back, slipping into game face, falling into the fight, and, for the first time since he awoke alone, things feel—almost—right.

Almost, because the first time his back brushes hers, she tenses.  Almost, because other than a few jeers from the vamps, the rasp of her breath and thud of her heartbeat, and the slaps and scuffles of battle, they fight in silence.  Any other night, any other battle, they’d be bantering, trading quips, innuendos, flipping the words back and forth and never letting them drop, throwing out the occasional taunts at their enemies.  There would be laughter, not this heavy silence.

But the motion is familiar, the warmth of her back occasionally brushing against his, the anticipation of where she’ll be: the dance.  They still do this better than anything; he still loves it more than anything.

Minutes later, clouds of dust settling around them, he finds himself lying on his back on the ground beside her.  She’s panting for breath and he watches it puff above her, then stares up at the moon through the tree branches.  He listens to her breathing, the low hum  of traffic beyond, the wind in the trees.

“Better?” he finally asks.

“A little.”

He wants to reach for her, pull her into his arms.  She probably isn’t feeling the cold yet, not with her blood pounding through her veins like that, but he knows that her skin would be nearly as cool as his.

But he doesn’t reach for her.  Because they still haven’t gotten there yet.  Closer.  But not yet.

“I’m not okay,” she says after a moment.

“I’m not askin’ you to be.”

“Good.  ‘Cause I’m not.”

He’s not usually good at this, but he waits.  Then she sighs.

“Tomorrow I’m talking to Giles and Willow.  We’re going to find some way to get this…immortality out of me.”

“Okay.”

Something sinks in his stomach, though, even as he answers; he hadn’t known till now how much he was depending on her being beside him forever; even if he knows intellectually, as Dawn pointed out, that she wouldn’t be, that sooner or later some nasty thing would get a taste of her, he still imagines a forever for them.

Maybe that was why he never pushed the issue, never asked her to face it, because the knowledge that she would be with him was too fragile, too precious.  At the beginning with her, when he found her after the alley battle that gave Angel his Shanshu, when she chose _him_ instead of a normal life, there had been room for nothing in his soul but bliss.  After a time, though, fear crept in: only the tiniest bit, so small that he almost couldn’t have named it, but there nonetheless: one day he would lose her.

But demons think only of the moment, even if souls are all about the past and the future, and so he let that portion of himself remind him how to live only in the present.

But slowly, Buffy’s perpetual youth became undeniable, and hope crept in.  He never examined it too closely, but his soul throbbed with the promise of having her by his side until the end (_what that end would be, he never really took the time to examine_).  Heaven is not a possibility for him, he knows that, but Buffy with him for decades, perhaps, if they’re lucky, centuries—how could he want for more?

But it isn’t till this moment, till she speaks of rejecting any chance at that forever, the he realizes with a sudden spasm of terror how much he’s grown to accept as fact the certainty of her immortality.

“Don’t you have anything to say?”  Buffy’s voice is sharp, but he can hear a hint of desperate fear in it.  It’s that fear that keeps his anger in check.

“You know I only want to see you happy.  If that’s what it takes, luv….”  He isn’t sure that he manages to keep all the negative emotions that are eating away at him—fear, anger, hurt—from his voice.

“And what will you do if one day, after I’ve lost everyone I care about, I go after some demon on purpose—a really strong one I know I can’t beat—or an apocalypse?  What then?”

Again, that sick feeling he’d never felt until today.  He knows exactly what she means.  Buffy would never out-and-out commit suicide, not ever.  But Spike knows Slayers better than anyone.

Suddenly he’s back in the alley behind the Bronze in a Sunnydale that lives forever in his mind, kneeling in front of her, her disdain and lust, revulsion and fascination burning white-hot as she looks down at him, his own desperate longing fueling his bitter words:  _Every Slayer has a death wish.  Even you._  Nikki, she had been ready to die, had come to him to be her partner in her last dance, knowing she wouldn’t win.  The Chinese Slayer was the same.  And he’d even seen the signs in Faith in the days leading up to her death.

Yes, if Buffy couldn’t die naturally, if she had to watch all of her friends and family leave her for death, sooner or later—probably later; Buffy is nothing if not stubborn—she would go chasing death till it caught her.

_And even if she didn’t_, Dawn’s voice echoes in his head, _it would find her anyway.  Sooner or later._

“I’d be fighting right beside you.  You know that.”

She leaps to her feet, then reaches out to drag him to his.  As soon as he’s upright, she shoves him, and he stumbles back.  It’s as close to hitting in anger as she’s come in nearly twenty years.

“You’re not supposed to be all calm and reasonable!  You’re supposed to _fight _me!”

Her words unlock the door holding back his anger, and he feels his game face slip into place as it all comes rushing through him.  “Oh, yeah?  That what you want Slayer?  Want us to go back to hitting?  Thought we’d moved past all that.”

“You’re supposed to fight to keep me here!”

He can tell by her tone that she’s as aware of her own unreasonableness as he is, but she’s clinging to it with both hands.

“You think I haven’t been doing that since you clawed your way out of your grave?  Can’t say I’ve always gone about it the right way, but I do it every soddin’ day!  My unlife is all about giving you yours!”

She opens her mouth, probably to throw a sharp retort at him, but he cuts her off before she can even begin.

“You think there’s anything for me here?  You die, Dawn, Angel, Dawn’s kiddies, what have I got left?  The mission, that’s what, and I’ll fight it till the day I dust, but you can’t curl up with a mission or laugh with it or love it.  So you’re it, Buffy.  If you think for one second that I wouldn’t give up everything I have to keep you safe and happy beside me, you don’t know anything about me, even after all this time.  But I also won’t keep you here if all you want to do is rest.  Of course you’re homesick for your heaven, and the Powers are fucking bastards to give you at taste of it then keep it from you.  I _know_ that.  And I want you here beside me, always.  Want to spend the rest of eternity exploring every single thing this world has to offer—with you.  But I know that isn’t fair.  And I know it won’t really be forever—even my century and a half isn’t that long compared to eternity, and who knows if you’ll have even that long?  I _know _all of that.  Don’t you think I _know_ it?”

Silence then, a kind even the sounds of traffic and wind, the noises of a city going about its night, can’t penetrate.  He’s never known any part of London to be so absolutely silent, not even in William’s day, and he realizes this is the moment.  What she does next will determine whether they’ll break or whether they still have a shot.

She stares at him for a few moments, breathing harshly, the exposed skin of her arms and neck silver as her hair in the moonlight.  He can’t really see her eyes, and for once he has no idea what’s going on in her head.

“_Spike_.”

The way she says his name threatens to tear him to shreds: husky, broken, scared, loving.  The way she says his name tells him they still have a chance.

“I know,” she whispers, her voice stricken.  “Oh, Spike.  I _know_.”

Her hand steals up and caresses his cheek: gentle and loving, but she’s trembling.  His eyes sink shut.  She slips her thumb into his mouth, cuts it on his fang, just a little.  A drop of blood wells up, and he tastes it, the essence of her: rich, warm, heady, and so fucking _alive_ that he almost can’t stand it.  It’s rare for them still, this offering of blood, a gift she gives only when she knows he most needs reassurance of a kind not even words or sex can bestow, and it still retains the aura of something sacred, holy.  He holds her taste there in his mouth for a long moment and doesn’t swallow her down till she removes her thumb.

Then she spins away from him and is gone, running through the trees back in the direction of Giles’s.

After a moment, he shakes back into his human face and follows.


	5. Infinitas Infinitio Infinitus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   _Learning to live is a lot harder than learning to die.  And just when Buffy masters one, she learns she's a novice at the other._

She smiled at him when she blew out the candles.

When he reached Giles’s, it was just in time to slip into his chair for dinner.  She was already in the middle of pretending that everything was all right and continued it all through the meal.  As with most things about her, her façade made him burn with annoyance and anger—_always trying to pretend like nothing’s the matter, like she’s got everything under control even when it’s all falling apart_—and simultaneously glow with admiration—_always putting others first, the protector; that’s my girl_. 

She laughed and chatted lightly, and if her gaiety was a little forced, no one was willing to acknowledge it.  No one was going to spoil the celebration. 

Spike had to force himself not to be as growly as he wanted to be, but the fact that Joy was sitting beside him chattering away helped.  He lavished his attention on her, and she glowed brighter with every word—her Uncle Spike was her favorite person on earth, and she made no secret of it—and her brightness kept him from breaking down in pain or anger as he wanted to.

That and the little looks Buffy kept throwing at him.  He could feel her eyes on him again and again throughout the meal (_just as, no matter what he ate, he could still taste her blood on his tongue_), and he would turn toward her quickly enough to catch a glimpse of longing in her eyes before she diverted her gaze.  Every little look was a plea for forgiveness.  She might not have said anything yet, but he knew how things would go. The anger started to ebb; he began to relax.

True, when Hannah, who was a magnificent cook, had appeared in the doorway of the dining room after dinner wheeling the red velvet cake with cream cheese icing (_Buffy’s favorite_) out on the little trolley, forty candles blazing away at the top, Buffy had flinched.  It was such a small movement that Spike didn’t expect anyone else to notice, but over the top of Joy’s shining head, he found Angel’s eyes on him.  Dawn slipped her hand into his, leaned close while everyone was singing—off key, mostly; for a group that had once lived through a musical, none of them could really sing, not even Giles any longer, his voice thin now, approaching a croak, and Spike found himself missing Tara and Anya more than he ever would have thought possible—and whispered.  “I tried to ixnay the andlescay, but I think Xander insisted.  Who would have thought you could actually fit forty candles on one cake?”

Another reminder.  Why couldn’t life cut his lady a break?

But Buffy recovered, as she always did, and leaned forward, the light from the forty glowing reminders creating a halo about her, making her look like a saint in a stained glass window: Joan of Arc, maybe, or the bloody Madonna or perhaps even an angel—and the tearstains he could see streaking her cheeks only made her, in his opinion, look that much more holy.  _The face of my salvation._

In past years, at past parties, she had winked at him when she blew out the candles—he’d completely corrupted her mind long ago, and that wink was her way of saying _I’ll blow out _your _candle later_—but this time she closed her eyes tight like a little girl saying her prayers.

But when she straightened, pushing her fall of golden hair over her shoulder—God, he loved her hair, never tired of just watching it or touching it or burying his face in its silk to soak in her scent—she met his eyes and smiled.

It was the softest of her smiles, pure, the kind that still startled him whenever he found himself on the receiving end of one, the kind he had never once imagined she would direct at him.  The one that warmed him through and told him more clearly than any words ever could that she really loved him.  The one that, at that moment, he hadn’t known he’d been waiting for but that filled him with relief as poignant as joy.

After cake and laughter, with the memory of that smile still warming him, he’d caught Buffy’s eye, then slipped out of the room and further into the old house, running his hand along carved mahogany banisters and diamond-paned windows, flashing back to his human days with every step.  He found himself at the door to the conservatory, opened it, slipped into the humidity and flower-scent of the glass room as he waited for Buffy to find him.

And now she has.  He looks up and she’s standing in the doorway, her smile gone.  She’s solemn now, serious in that way only she can be, but her eyes are huge and luminous and tentative, reminding him of the moments before he died the second time.  The first time she told him she loved him.

He holds out his arms.  “C’mere, love.”

She stumbles forward, kicking off the strappy heels that make her almost as tall as him, and rushes into his arms.  Her own go around him—tighttighttight, tighter than any human could tolerate—and she rests her cheek on his chest.

“I love you so much, Spike.”

Nearly twenty years of hearing those words from her luscious lips, and they still tear him apart and put him back together like they did the first time.  “I know you do, Buffy.”  He could have replied with an _I love you_ of his own, but he knows her, and he knows that that isn’t what she needs to hear right now.

She looks up at him without moving from his arms or loosening her own, neck craned back, her chin resting on his chest, her eyes pleading.  “Do you?  Sometimes I worry.  I told you I never could for so long—“

He captures her face in between his hands.  “Buffy.  Love.  Listen to me.  Always knew you had more love in you than anyone else, just had to let the walls down, let it all come out.  And you have.  Been pourin’ your love into me for years now.  You keep me livin’.”

It still thrills him that his words can make that lovely flush rise to her cheeks.  “I shouldn’t have—this morning—and in the park—the things I said—“

His arms go around her again.  “And I shouldn’t have teased, love.  Should have known that you needed to talk about it or some time to yourself or—“

“You couldn’t have known.  I never told you how much it was bothering me.”  She laughs out loud, a strangled sound, at the look he gives her.  “Oh, I know that usually doesn’t stop you from knowing anyway.  But whenever we’ve had…rough patches, it’s because we don’t actually talk about whatever it is.  And it’s usually my fault—I’m still not used to verbalizing things and—“

“Trust me, Slayer.  My stubbornness causes just as many problems as your holding things in.”

“No, Spike.  Not this time.  I mean, yeah, that’s true sometimes, but this time it was me.  I can’t believe…I can’t believe I just walked out like that.  I _hate_ myself for doing that—the one thing I promised myself I’d never—“

The words _hate myself_ send a shock through him, hurl him back to the year after her resurrection, and he can’t stop the protests:  “Buffy, pet, you didn’t—“

“I _did_.  That was _awful_.  I can’t…I thought I’d moved beyond that.  I’ve been so proud of myself for finally growing up, for being so mature, for making this—us—work, for patching up my relationships with Dawn and Giles and Xander and Willow, for finally being a grownup.  But the fact that I can still do that to you, still treat you that way when I love you so much, when you’re so good to me, when I try _so hard_ to be good to you….”

“Everyone slips up.”  He doesn’t know why he can’t just let her name her faults.  He always has to defend her, even to herself.  He remembers the day of Xander’s not-a-wedding, apologizing for the very hurt he relished.  He can never not be who he is, no matter how hard he tries.

She’s right.  She did mess up.  Badly.  And Christ, but she hurt him.  And she’s apologizing.  A real apology, the kind she never knew how to give back in the old days.  Still, he can’t keep the words of denial from tumbling out.

She shakes her head.  “‘Slipping up’ would have been yelling at you or throwing the lamp at the wall or something.  ‘Slipping up’ isn’t walking out without saying anything.  I was so, so wrong, Spike.  And…I…”  She takes a deep breathe, begins again.  “I’m more sorry than I can say.”

There are so many things about her that he’s still not used to, that jar him with their newness even after all this time.  The words _I love you_.  Waking up with her in his arms and knowing she won’t try to slip away and deny everything.  Being accepted by her sodding Scoobies.  The sweet words and pet names she uses now when they make love.  But perhaps hearing her apologize with no equivocation whatsoever…perhaps that is the thing that still surprises him most.

“I need you beside me.  More than that, I _want_ you beside me.  I choose for you to be there.  If I’m going to make it through this, I can’t shut you out.  And yeah, maybe it was better for me to leave than to stay and take it all out on you, but the _way_ I did it—that was so wrong.  I _won’t_ do that again, Spike.  I promise.”

Promises are lightly spoken, but he believes her.  The solemnity of the promise in her voice reminds him of when she spoke her vows.  Their wedding hadn’t been a real wedding—it couldn’t be, not with one of them legally dead—but Giles had spoken a few words, and then they had exchanged vows and rings, and then there had been cake and buffalo wings and a dance to “Wind Beneath My Wings” and lots of laughter and tears. 

But it was the vows, the words she’d written, that made it a real wedding for him.  She’d made promises, ones he believed absolutely, ones she has never once violated.  And he had done the same.  They had known better than to make ones they couldn’t keep.  More than fifteen years, and neither one of them has broken a single one.  That’s what lets him believe her now.  Fifteen years might not be long for him, but for her?  Until now, until this realization…they’d been forever.

“And I don’t want you to defend me to me.  I want you to be honest with me.  Tell me how much I hurt you.  I know I did.  I love that you’ve always got my back and that you always want to protect me, but the thing I love most about you is that you never let me stay in one place—you let me grow.  And I can’t do that unless you let me know the things I need to work on.”  She tightened her arms around his back, thumped her chin against his chest.  “Say you will.  Promise.”

A tiny part of him wants to let loose his darkness, lash out by telling her she doesn’t really mean it, that she might say she wants him to, but the moment he does it, she’ll close off, refuse to listen, lash out at him.  But that’s the voice that always starts the worst of their arguments when he obeys its promptings.  And so he ignores it.  They’re beyond this.  Buffy still might not be through growing up, and Lord knows he isn’t, but her words are right.  She _does_ need to hear it.  He smiles at her order, but he’s absolutely sincere when he says, “I promise, my love.”  He’ll risk any arguments she may start.  He’ll give her what she needs, even if she stops wanting it.

“And I know it didn’t help anything that I was talking to Angel.  I mean, not that I shouldn’t be allowed to talk to him, because I totally should—we’re friends, and, think about it, he’s pretty much like my brother-in-law—”

“_What?_”

She laughs softly, and it’s real this time, without the strangled sound.  “Don’t even pretend you two don’t have that brothers thing going on.  You totally do.  You know you love each other, even if you won’t admit it.”

There’s no _way_ he’d ever admit to that, even if he knows she’s right.  “That poncey bugger?”

She ignores him.  “But I shouldn’t have talked to him before I talked to you.  Not when…not with everything in our pasts.”

“But did he help you, sweet?”

Her eyes go thoughtful, that little line appearing between them that lets him know she’s thinking hard.  “Yeah.  I think he did.”

“Good.”  He means it, even if he can’t help but feel a twinge of resentment in his stomach.

“He reminded me why I chose you.”

He stares down at her, astonished.  “Yeah?”

“Yeah.  And I mean, sure, he helped put a lot of it in perspective for me, but nothing that anyone else couldn’t have done.  Definitely nothing that you couldn’t have done better.”

“Now you’re just sweet talkin’ me to get me to forgive you.”

The luminous solemnity is back in her eyes again.  “Do you?”

He wants to say, _Do you even need to ask?  _But she does.  And he needs to say it.  The words are important, even for people like them who are more comfortable with actions.  Maybe especially for people like them.  He long ago decided that that wanker Ryan O’Neal’s _Love means never having to say you’re sorry_ is the stupidest thing he’s ever heard in the entirety of his existence.  Love, he understands now in ways he didn’t before the soul, means asking for forgiveness over and over and giving it again and again.

So he says, voice as solemn as hers, “I do.”

The pure smile lights up her face again.  “For the leaving.  And the things I said.”

“For everything.  But Buffy….”

“I don’t know, Spike,” she sighs, and he marvels at the way she knows him now.  In the old days, he always felt that he could read her so well, but he knew he was a mystery to her.  Now, though, she seems to have finally reached the point where she _knows_ him.  And maybe that’s what he really wanted all along.  “I’m still going to ask Giles and Willow to do some research.”  She catches his face between her hands before he can turn away and says the next words firmly.  “But that’s just because I want to understand why this is happening to me.  Even with my little visit to the Shadowmen and the scythe-Willow-all-white-haired-hey-we’re-all-Slayers-now spell, we don’t really know much about what the Slayer means.  And I need to know.  I…I think I’m starting to understand Buffy-the-woman.  I want to understand Buffy-the-Slayer, too.”

This curiosity still makes him nervous, but he understands.  She’s grown to accept the idea that she’ll never be a normal woman, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t still sometimes resent it.  “Of course, love.”

“And about the whole suicide-by-demon thing.  For now—for the foreseeable future—I’m not going to go looking for death—I couldn’t do that to you.  But I can’t make a promise about this, Spike.  I’m not going to tell you that I’ll never _want _to seek my own death.  Because I probably will want to.  And when that time comes, I’ll have another decision to make.  But for now, for as far ahead as I can imagine at the moment, I won’t.  But I’m not going to let the thought of dying hold me back, either.  I’m still the Slayer.  I’ve still got the mission.  I’m not giving it up.”

“I would never ask that of you.”  _As much as I may want to_.  Because that fearlessness, the courage and the selflessness: all of those things make her Buffy.  She wouldn’t be the woman he loves without them.  He long ago realized that.

It’s the way she qualifies it all.  The fact that she won’t promise.  She’s reserving the right to change her mind later, and that terrifies him.  He wants to fall to the ground and beg her to swear on her mother’s grave that she won’t seek her own.  He wants to push her away from him and yell that if she doesn’t promise, he’s done with all this.

But he can’t.  Because she won’t promise him that, and he knows it.  He knows that she’s come as far as she can come for the moment, and if he pushes her further, he might lose her all over again.  And he’s not prepared to face that.

He wants to hate her for it, for not being willing to reassure him, for hinting that someday she might leave him, that she might reject him by proving that he’s not enough for her. 

But he knows Slayers better than anyone.  He knows the lust for death that lurks in their hearts.  And more than that, he remembers the hunger for heaven—the yearning to be _elsewhere_—that she couldn’t hide back in that dark year when she first came back.

He knows.  And so he can’t hate her, and he can’t ask for more.

“But see, here’s the brilliant thing about it.” He shakes his fear away, arches a brow, and she smiles as she continues.  “You’ll be there, too.  You’ll always be at my side.  So it doesn’t matter where I go.  You’ll be there.”

At least she can give him this.  It’s more than he ever thought he would have from her.  And her sincerity—he knows she means it.  Means every word.  He feels tears start to prick at his eyes, but he holds them back.  No need to turn into a gormless poofter.  “Yeah?”

She laughs again, a bubbly sound, and leans her cheek against him again.  “Yeah.”

Yeah.

After a few blissful moments of just holding her, he asks, “What’d you wish for, love, when you blew out those bloody candles?  What was your birthday wish?”

She sighs, a long release of breath.  “Courage.”

“_What_?”

“Courage.”

“What d’ya need more of that for?  Already the bloody bravest person I’ve ever known!”

She looks up at him again, lays her hand against his cheek.  Despite her earlier pronouncement that he needed to be truthful with her, she’s always been touched by his righteous indignation on her behalf, especially, she told him once, when he’s defending her against her own insecurities. 

“Facing monsters and vamps and death—that’s so second nature now that it barely takes any courage at all.  It’s just what I _do_.  But keeping on living while not getting any older, watching people I love grow old and weak and die and leave me—that’s terrifying.  So I wished for the courage to face it.”

That tight feeling is back, binding his chest in iron bands—if he had to breathe, he wouldn’t have been able to.  Hurting for her is more painful by far than any pain he’s ever felt for himself.

“I’m scared, Spike.  To death.”  She grabs his chin, forces him to look at her when he tries to turn away from the bite of her dark pun.  “Hey.  I am.  This is scarier than dying or apocalypses or hellgods or falling in love with a vampire.  And I’m going to keep on being terrified and probably angry, and sometimes I may have to leave—though I will _always _tell you I’m coming back and mean it—or I might take it out on you or I might just…break down.  But I can keep on going.  I _can_.  And you know why?  Because I have people who love me—who are…pouring strength into me.  Keeping me living.”

There’s still a part of him that remembers that she’s still refusing to promise to stay alive.  A part of him that is still hurt, still angry.

But that part of him can’t begin to compare to the part of him that sees how far she’s come.  That she can say these things, admit to them—and to _him_, of all people.  And even more than that, he can see how far she'll go.  Nothing can stop her kind of strength, her kind of love.  Even death didn't defeat her, and his heart knows that.  That part of him wants to fall to his knees in awe of her, of who she is, so strong, so beautiful, so righteous, beaten but unvanquished—always.  How could there have ever been a time he didn’t love her?

To keep from doing that, collapsing under the weight of his love for her, he has to joke, to force the words through his throat, though he almost chokes on them.  “Don’t suppose I’m one of those givin’ you strength?”  _Why do my jokes always come out sounding so needy?_

But she leans up, kisses him, warm, slow-burning, thorough, and it’s worth it.  “Only the most important, baby.”

He closes his eyes, feeling that warm pleasant shock that always shoots through him when she uses endearments with him—they still come hard for her, but she tries.

“You’ll make it, love.  _That_’s what you do.  Odds are all against you, no hope in sight, and you still make it.  You always make it.”

Music, some scratchy old rock’n’roll tune, floats in from the party, tangling itself in the conservatory’s humidity, till he can barely tell the sound from the scent of orchids and roses and African violets and heliotrope.  He tilts his head back for a moment to look up through the glass ceiling, and though it should be impossible—with the lights blazing here in the room, with the lights of London beyond—he swears he can see the stars.

She loops her arms around his neck, and they start to sway, dancing slowly to the music, and her closeness, the surety of her has him falling in love all over again.

“No, Spike.  That’s what _we_ do.”


End file.
